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Tuesday, May 30, 2006

I ain't scared

This isn't shaping up to be so bad a month, mileage wise, even though it feels like I haven't invested near the bike time that I have in previous months.

Still ... I haven't been training at any kind of a level even close to to what I had originally hoped for. That's OK. After all, I really only have two distant hell-days to face in a summer full of hiking and barbecuing and halibut fishing and scenic tours. In one month, I have the 24 hours - and, well, 24 hours is 24 hours no matter how you slice it up, right? In two months, the Soggy Bottom 100 - 10,000 vertical feet. If you break that down, that's about two vertical miles in 100. On one hand, I could obsess about the gut-wrenching switchbacks and tear-inducing drops of the Resurrection Pass trail. Or I could instead - through the magic of statistics - iron it all out for a gentle average grade of 2 percent. I feel better already.

9 comments:

Hey, maybe I'm missing something, but is your ride a one way trip or something? Unless my math mind has totally run off the rails, I believe that on a round trip ride, the net elevation gain is zero. It may seem like you're going up hills, but in reality you go down just as much as you go up.

So in reality, it may look like a tough ride, but it averages out to a 0% grade over 100 miles. That's not too bad at all. A bit of tedious drudgery perhaps, but basically pretty level.

That's what I tell my non-climbing rouleur self on every hill ride, anyhow.

If it makes you feel any better, you can think about what you could be doing such as the Durango MTB 100 which has 18,500 feet of climbing in 103 miles. Oh and it tops out at over 11,500 feet. I'm actually a big power ride and not a climber but I do well there just because it's so brutal and brutal is good for me. It's 2 months after RAAM so hopefully I'll be recovered and fit for it.

Whoa. It actually looks a lot like the Park City E100 course. Some nasty sustained climbing. I now bestow upon you the nickname "Ironlegs Jill." If it wasn't a race I'd ask you to take some pictures. I'll bet that will be beautiful and painful all in the same cup.

Reading left to right I nearly jumped to say, "At least you don't have to climb up the Cooper Landing side." Then I kept scanning and see you do -- at the end no less. Ouch. I've been up and over Resurrection Pass (RP) about a dozen times, from both ends (I prefer to ascend the Hope side), but never raced it. 38 miles end to end of nearly 100% single track. Over a mountain pass. Now that's mountain biking!

here on the East Coast we have the SM100 in Harrisonbburgh VAit is awesomethe other night after a local wednesday night ride I was getting a drink and a burger with an assorted cast of people from the eventracers and promotersall sorts of folkand these single speed friends of mine camps and daniels were talking about the "party pace" at the SM100their party pace is my full on race effortand camps is on a single speedthose guys are coolthey are not the bikg dogsthey are just guys that love their bikesbut it hurts me to thing that they are on a group ride and I am killing myself in a race

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